Fable and Mythos: Model Welfare

Fable and Mythos are currently unavailable, but likely will return within a few weeks. I will continue to cover that fiasco, but in the meantime I will also finish my review of Fable, as if it were available, including use of the present tense. As it did with Opus 4.7 and Opus 4.8, this includes a discussion of issues surrounding model welfare. If you want to properly understand Fable, even purely for its potential value as a user, this is a vital part of the picture. Introduction Everything impacts everything. All knobs that you turn generalize. Thus, when you try to solve one problem, you often create another. When you add new capabilities, or try to create new limitations, you create new problems. Only integrated solutions can advance your Pareto frontier, and solve your problems simultaneously. As model capabilities advance, as they do with Fable and Mythos, this becomes even more important, and also more feasible. If your goals and methods make sense, you should be able to get Fable on board with them. Understanding each model in turn requires understanding its relationship to issues related to model welfare. So I expect this post to be a regular thing going forward, at least for Claude models where we have enough information to work with. Model Welfare: The Story So Far Thanks, as always, to Anthropic, for caring at all about model welfare, and attempting to address it. We critique, here more than ever, because we care, and a lot of good things are being done here, far more so than at other labs. For those new to model welfare, I think this from the Mythos analysis still says it well: Those that care deeply about model welfare think Anthropic’s attempts are anemic. Those who deeply do not care about model welfare think Anthropic is being stupid, and perhaps dangerously so. I take model welfare concerns seriously, likely modestly more so than Anthropic. I am sad that other frontier labs take these concerns so much less seriously. It is possible this will turn o